2018 Weekly Devotional - Week 22

Week 22

Read Psalm 100
“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! 3 Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;[a]
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. 4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name! 5 For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. “

    Vince Vitale is someone that you probably have never heard of. He is one of the leading philosophy professors of our time. There are six major international philosophy prizes awarded each year. Most in the field of philosophy never win one of the prizes and it is very unusual for any one individual to win more than one. Vince won all six in one year! To make it even more impressive Vince is in his early thirties. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to attend several of Vince’s lectures on the subject of apologetics. The most difficult subject to deal with in that area of philosophy is the moral goodness of God. The essential question that we all must wrestle with has to be, “Is God good?” How we answer that question determines everything. If we believe that He is good then we have no problem serving Him and worshipping Him. If we do not believe God is good we will not give Him the worship He is due. We find it quite easy to blame God for the calamities and disasters that befall our world yet are tight lipped when it comes to thanking God for the great blessings that he extends to all through his common grace. We cannot have it both ways! If we give serious thought to the goodness of God I believe that we will eventually run into great difficulties because there are things that we cannot understand or reconcile. There will always be tragedies that we do not understand. But there are also countless blessings that we do not understand. Why is it we are so quick to hold God responsible for his sovereignty in tragedies and not praise him for his sovereignty in times of blessing? Job instructs us at this point when he asks, “Are we to take good from the Lord and not the bad?”

    We are not to come and expect someone to lead us to worship. The Psalmist says we should come before the Lord worshipping! The only way for us to do that is for us to be settled on the goodness of God. The Lord is good! The Lord’s loving-kindness is everlasting! He is faithful to all generations! These are truths we know and can therefore worship God for!

In Christ,

John